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Sous Sol
Brand strategy, Website, Social & content, Campaigns & events, Email & CRM
A speakeasy built on one idea: the lab.
Creative direction, website, menu, photography and a ticketed Halloween campaign for Sous Sol, an experimental cocktail bar in a vaulted Old Town basement.
The challenge
Sous Sol is a cocktail bar in a historic vaulted basement in Bucharest's Old Town, a part of the city full of bars that look alike from the street. It had a strong room and a strong team, and needed a position that would last well beyond the opening months. It also needed a website that takes bookings, and campaigns that sell without breaking the speakeasy's discretion.
The insight
The scene only looks saturated if you copy it: Sous Sol's edge is the lab, crafted and quietly discovered.
The approach
Our strategists read the market before anything was designed, treating Sous Sol as one venue in a hospitality group, with a role of its own next to its sister bar, The Tender Room. The creative direction built on the bar's core value, the experimental factor: warm light, the red of the curtains, engraved detail. Our team then carried it everywhere guests meet the bar: a website with bookings built in, a menu to read by candlelight, photography and social content. When a partner event came in, we proposed a full funnel instead of a lone poster, and it became the campaign.
The project
Creative direction, website, menu, photography and a ticketed Halloween campaign for Sous Sol, an experimental cocktail bar in a vaulted Old Town basement.
What we delivered
- Strategy and market research (with The Tender Room)
- Creative direction
- Webflow website with online bookings
- Cocktail menu
- Photography and social content
- Website audit and update: copy, structure, structured data, FAQ
- Consent-based analytics set-up
- Premoniții campaign: key visual, carousel, poster, flyer, email sequence, landing page
Discover — Reading the market
A study of two concepts under one owner, Sous Sol and The Tender Room, with local and international benchmarks and hypotheses tested one by one.
Strategy and research, March 2026
Define — Creative direction
We built the position on the bar's core value, the experimental factor, then set the moodboard, palette and type: warm lights, the red of the curtains, Marcellus.
Creative direction deck
Design — A menu to read by candlelight
Aged parchment and engraved illustrations, from the bar's heritage page to each signature drink.
The cocktail menu
Deliver — The website
soussolbar.com, shot mostly with our own photography, with bookings built in.
soussolbar.com
Grow — Audit and update
The client's feedback and our page-by-page audit became one itemised update: copy, structure, structured data, an FAQ for answer engines, alt text and consent-based analytics.
Itemised update, October 2026
Grow — Premoniții: key visual first
For a Halloween night with Saroa Luxury Events we drew two directions; the minimal gold card over the real bar won, and every asset was derived from it.
Approved KV, direction B (drawn)
Grow — A funnel, not a poster
Carousel, poster and flyer with a ticket QR at the top; a landing page that explains the concept in the middle; the ticket page at the bottom. An email sequence went to a cleaned, opted-in list.
Carousel, print, emails, landing page live 13 Oct
Results
What it added up to.
soussolbar.com is live and signed by FA Studios, with real venue photography, booking flows, venue structured data, an FAQ built for answer engines and voice search, and consent-based analytics the site never had before. The Premoniții landing page went live on 13 October, built from the key visual the organisers approved: a new kind of night, explained before anyone reaches the ticket page.
The outcome
What the work changed.
soussolbar.com is live and signed by FA Studios, with real venue photography, booking flows, venue structured data, an FAQ built for answer engines and voice search, and consent-based analytics the site never had before. The Premoniții landing page went live on 13 October, built from the key visual the organisers approved: a new kind of night, explained before anyone reaches the ticket page.
A note from Alex
Sous Sol is a room I know well, and I keep coming back to it. The work never needed volume; it needed restraint: warm light, the red of the curtains, details you find rather than notice. When Premoniții came in, the ask was a poster. We proposed a funnel instead, a landing page that explains the night before anyone reaches the ticket page, because a new kind of event needs more than one touchpoint. The organisers took it, and the drawn gold card became the whole campaign.
Alex Codreanu
Founder and design lead
What the client said
Credits
FA Studios: research, creative direction, website, menu design, photography, social content, campaign and email. Premoniții: a Saroa Luxury Events × Sous Sol night.
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